Thelonious Monk - Thelonious Monk: Les Liaisons Dangereuses 1960

Pitchfork 87

There have been many exceptional eras in jazz history—we’re in one now, in fact—but no one year reverberated like 1959. Miles Davis recorded Kind of Blue, John Coltrane made Giant Steps, Charles Mingus released Mingus Ah Um, and Ornette Coleman barnstormed into New York and unleashed The Shape of Jazz to Come.

Thelonious Monk, as Rushmore-worthy as those others, put out no less than three albums, all in a variety of settings: the large ensemble At Town Hall; 5 by Monk by 5 with his quintet; and the solo Thelonious Alone in San Francisco. If these were not as monumental as the aforementioned—or as brilliant as his own Brilliant Corners from 1957—then they showcased his vast breadth as a truly original pianist, bandleader, and above all, as a writer. His many virtues are underscored again with the unveiling of yet another recording he made that year: the soundtrack for Roger Vadim’s film Les Liaisons Dangereuses, itself an adaptation of Pierre Choderlos de Laclos’ 18th century novel. Improbably lost to the world, the recordings were never released on their own until now, on the centennial of Monk’s birth. If 1959 was a summit in jazz, it may also have marked, on balance, Monk’s annus mirabilis.

Thelonious Monk: Les Liaisons Dangereuses 1960—a limited-edition double-LP and 2xCD set—was produced by Zev Feldman, François Le Xuan, and Frederic Thomas for the independent Sam Records and Saga labels with full permission from Monk’s estate. It’s bolstered by notes from scholars including Robin D.G. Kelley, author of Thelonious Monk: The Life and Times of an American Original, as well as photographs from the session, which took place down the block from Carnegie Hall at Nola Penthouse Studio on 111 West 57th Street. (Monk being Monk, he wore a conical hat during the date.)

Jazz had such pan-cultural appeal in the late 1950s that Duke Ellington had a cameo in Otto Preminger’s Anatomy of a Murder, for which he also did the music; Mingus scored John Cassavetes’ directorial debut, Shadows; and Miles did the memorable soundtrack for Ascenseur Pour L’Échafaud. Even Vadim, whose personal life was more interesting than his life’s work—his two autobiographies were titled Memoirs of the Devil and Bardot, Deneuve, and Fonda: My Life With the Three Most Beautiful Women in the World—used the Modern Jazz Quartet to compose the music for another of his erotic dramas, No Sun in Venice, two years earlier.

Despite some personal and professional issues he was dealing with, Monk was in top form on this mid-summer day—spry, full of wit, his ideas delightfully unpredictable as ever. The photos show that his wife Nellie—his rock—was there as was his patron, the Baroness Pannonica de Koenigswarter. His band was made up of Sam Jones on bass, Art Taylor on drums, tenor saxophonist Charlie Rouse, who would go on to be his loyal soldier for years to come, and another tenor, Barney Wilen, which is how these tapes were discovered. The producers found them while combing Wilen’s archives in search of unreleased material the Frenchman might have left behind.

By the time Monk agreed to record, there was no time to write original music so he dipped into his own songbook: two versions each of “Crepuscule With Nellie,” “Well, You Needn’t,” “Light Blue,” and “Rhythm-a-Ning” (the first of which sounds as nimble and alive as any he’d done). Monk did no less than four versions of “Pannonica,” plus “Ba-Lue Bolivar Ba-Lues-Are,” “Six in One,” and the hymn “We’ll Understand It Better By and By.” What might have been monotonous in other hands provided ample opportunity for Monk, who wrote music with acres of room for his improvisational pivots.

Indeed, the music works better as an album than a soundtrack, though it’s clear Vadim had real affection for jazz. “Crepuscule With Nellie” plays over the opening credits, followed immediately by “Well, You Needn’t,” and soon after “Bolivar Ba-Lues-Are.” There’s even a scene with jazz musicians Kenny Clarke, Kenny Dorham, Paul Rovère, Barney Wilen, and Duke Jordan, who also composed music for the film (though it’s not included in this set). But the soundtrack often intrudes and overwhelms some sections of the movie, whether during a party scene or at a ski resort or in a bedroom.

On Les Liaisons Dangereuses 1960, Monk is a heavyweight engaging with a middleweight, and middlebrow, in Vadim, whose career was more defined by his romantic conquests than his artistic content. But that’s not on Monk. And his work here, in the middle of 1959, is as thought-provoking as anything he recorded in that prodigious year.